Ahead of the 71st Republic Day, the Central Government on Saturday announced the names of 21 Padma Shri awardees this year.
Professor Radha Mohan and his daughter Sabarmatee of Nayagarh district were among the awardees.
Radha Mohan, a former Economics Professor and Sabarmatee, a conservationist, were awarded Padma Shri in the field of agriculture for their work in organic farming.
The duo started Sambhav, a resource centre for farmers across the country. Sambhav has successfully grown many vanishing food crops such as clove bean, jack bean, black rice and sword bean.
Besides, they transformed 36 hectares of degraded land in Nayagarh district into a food forest by soil and water conservation techniques.
The forest has over 1,000 species of plants and 500 varieties of rice and supports a seed bank with 700 indigenous varieties of seeds.
They also run an ‘Adopt a Seed’ initiative to give region-specific seed varieties to farmers for free.a
